Rohan Dennis continued BMC Racing Team’s run of top ten finishes at the Amgen Tour of California, finishing ninth after 212km of uphill racing on Stage 5.

Danilo Wyss was part of an 18 rider breakaway that escaped of the front of the peloton after less than an hour of racing. Working together, the group were able to establish of maximum advantage of just over 5 minutes.

At one point, it looked like the group might make it all the way to finish line but inside the final 25 kilometers, attacks caused a reshuffle of the group. Eventually only three riders remained in front with Tom Skujins (Cannondale) taking victory in South Lake Tahoe.

Behind them, Rohan was positioned well in a select group of chasing riders and crossed the line in ninth place, 43 seconds behind Skujins.

Brent Bookwalter was not far behind as he finished 11th from the same group and maintained fourth place on the General Classification going into tomorrow’s individual time trial, 40 seconds behind race leader Julian Alaphilippe (Ettix-Quick-Step).

Quotes of the day

Sport director, Jackson Stewart said: “It was really a hard, high altitude day and we were climbing for most of the stage. Even with a tailwind for most of the day the whole group was really we were fighting up the climbs.”

“A big break went away and we had Danilo [Wyss] make it into that group with about 18 guys. The group had almost every team in it so it was a pretty dangerous move but it didn’t really have any GC guys in it. Most of the big teams controlled the gap so they couldn't get too much time and we helped a lot with this in the final.”

“At the end, three guys got away from that group and Danilo’s group got caught right at the finish right at end. We kept a good pace for Brent and Rohan so that they could keep their GC time together and I hope that tomorrow we can take a bunch more time in the time trial.”

Rohan Dennis said: “Today’s stage went really well actually. It wasn’t the perfect situation or scenario with Maxime Bouet (Ettix-Quick-Step) out in the breakaway but we worked with a few other teams to keep it within reach in case he was to feeling good and decided to jump of the front and try and take that leaders jersey.”

“We had Danilo in the breakaway as well to try and hopefully, if it stayed away, get a stage win but it wasn’t the case and for us it was just about not losing time on the finish line.”

“I think today the climbing was the biggest factor on the stage. The altitude for me, because I have done a lot of altitude training in the last month and a half, wasn’t really an issue at all. I actually felt more comfortable up here than what I was at sea level the past couple of days.”

“Tomorrow was one my main goals for this race, other than staying out of trouble and being up there on GC. I have been training pretty well and things are going well for me for the time trial in Folsom and I am looking to go one step better than two year’s ago and try and take a lot of time out of the GC guys for sure.”